| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: visit in a few days, and was denied admission. He had now learned
the power of money, and made his way by a piece of gold to the
inner apartment, where he found the philosopher in a room half
darkened, with his eyes misty and his face pale. "Sir," said he,
"you are come at a time when all human friendship is useless; what
I suffer cannot be remedied: what I have lost cannot be supplied.
My daughter, my only daughter, from whose tenderness I expected all
the comforts of my age, died last night of a fever. My views, my
purposes, my hopes, are at an end: I am now a lonely being,
disunited from society."
"Sir," said the Prince, "mortality is an event by which a wise man
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: "Are you Chirpy Bird?" asked Glubber Fish.
"Yes. I--"
"You must leave the pond." It was a tone of finality.
"But why?" asked Chirpy Bird.
"Because you'll soon be eating us and our children. Besides,
birds don't live under water."
"But I'm not a bird," Chirpy Bird protested.
"What's your name?" demanded the other, who was called Spotted Fish.
"Chirpy Bird. But--"
"There you are," he said, with a tone of satisfaction.
"My name is Chirpy Bird," said the little one, "but I'm a fish."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: some awful memorials of an injured and ill-fated nun.
It was wonderful that her friends should seem
so little elated by the possession of such a home,
that the consciousness of it should be so meekly borne.
The power of early habit only could account for it.
A distinction to which they had been born gave no pride.
Their superiority of abode was no more to them than their
superiority of person.
Many were the inquiries she was eager to make
of Miss Tilney; but so active were her thoughts,
that when these inquiries were answered, she was hardly
Northanger Abbey |
